Overview

Now a major motion picture directed by Ralph Fiennes, co-starring Fiennes and Felicity Jones with Michelle Fairley, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Tom Hollander: the unforgettable story of Charles Dickens's mistress Nelly Ternan, and of the secret relationship that linked them.

When Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857, she was 18: a professional actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep. He was 45: a literary legend, a national treasure, married with ten ...

More About
This Book

Overview

Now a major motion picture directed by Ralph Fiennes, co-starring Fiennes and Felicity Jones with Michelle Fairley, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Tom Hollander: the unforgettable story of Charles Dickens's mistress Nelly Ternan, and of the secret relationship that linked them.

When Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857, she was 18: a professional actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep. He was 45: a literary legend, a national treasure, married with ten children. This meeting sparked a love affair that lasted over a decade, destroying Dickens's marriage and ending with Nelly's near-disappearance from the public record. In this remarkable work of biography, Claire Tomalin rescues Nelly from obscurity, not only returning the neglected actress to her rightful place in history, but also giving us a compelling and truthful account of the great Victorian novelist. Through Dickens's diaries, correspondence, address books, and photographs, Tomalin is able to reconstruct the relationship between Charles and Nelly, bringing it to vivid life. The result is a riveting literary detective story—and a portrait of a singular woman.

Related Subjects

Meet the Author

Claire Tomalin is the author of eight highly acclaimed biographies, including Thomas Hardy and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, which won the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. She has previously won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Hawthornden Prize, the NCR Book Award for Non-Fiction, and the Whitbread Biography Award.

Your Rating:

Your Recommendations:

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked,
or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to
Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original
and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you
and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not
violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help
ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer.
However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or
to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the
information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reminder:

- By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its
sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the
review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.

- Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly
those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com
also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.

You have successfully created your Pen Name. Start enjoying the benefits of the BN.com Community today.

Sort by:
Showing
all of
6
Customer Reviews

Anonymous

Posted January 10, 2014

This is a dry "biography"

I decided to read this after hearing Ralph Fiennes speak about the upcoming movie and how he became fascinated with Charles Dickens upon reading the screenplay. The movie must be a highly fictionalized and dramatized account of Dickens' relationship with Nelly, as the book is a very dry, mostly factual account of their affair. I plodded through it because I am a Dickens devotee and I was interested by his persona and learning about his power and weakness. If you are looking for a good read, try something else about Dickens because this book is definitely tough to stick with. It is boring and dry. I cannot recommend it. I hope the movie is MUCH more interesting!!!!

7 out of 8 people found this review helpful.

Was this review helpful? YesNoThank you for your feedback.Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

Anonymous

Posted January 18, 2014

Not sure if it was a good book

[FTC: I received this book in a Goodreads/FirstReads giveaway. All opinions are my own. I am a historian, having read first person history in preparing for one Masters [of three] . My opinions are not influenced by how I got the book]

This is a scholarly biography of Ellen("Nelly") Ternan, alledged to be the mistress of Charles Dickens. According to the authir she was. What little is left of her history does question that, most having been destroyed at Dickens' and her death.

The question becomes how fluid morals and myths were during the Victorian era of British history, and how mythic the name Charles Dickens was, and still is, in England. Can we look at this through the Victorian eyepiece, or must we look back on it from once we stand? The prior reviewer said that they had read the book after hearing Feinnes' lauding the screenplay. This book has been out a long time.

Scholarly it is. Balanced on scandal it also is. Titillating it isn't Tomalin is a biographer of some note, but this book is not well written, rather long, and seems to have two authors: One adores Dickens, and one tries to make him human by showing his feet of clay

4 out of 7 people found this review helpful.

Was this review helpful? YesNoThank you for your feedback.Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

gedCA

Posted March 28, 2014

COLOSSALLY BORING.

"It suited most men to believe that a virtuous actress was as likely as an honest thief."—page 49

Perhaps if I had a better knowledge of, and appreciation for, Charles Dickens, Victorian England, and the plethora of people and places of 1850s/1860s London/England named, I would have gotten more out of Claire Tomalin's gossipy and speculative biographical offering: THE INVISIBLE WOMAN: The story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. But I doubt it.

Any story a highlight of which is the purchase of a dog collar in Paris—"Nelly did some shopping, or at least bought a blue collar with a silver bell for Lady Clara," page 191—begs the question: Why bother?

Recommendation: Why bother?

"No doubt he believed that, at the sensitive point where the theater met the outside world, hypocrisy became not only excusable but absolutely necessary."—page 155

NOOKbook edition, 350 pages

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Was this review helpful? YesNoThank you for your feedback.Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.